[mnahkies]

I don't have so much knowledge about EV repairs, but I got burnt by this on ICE cars already - had a car fail a regular fitness test on suspension bushes, they weren't replaceable without replacing the whole arm(s). What should've been a $40 part was being quoted as more than the cars value.

(I'm not sure if there was a way around this, there may well have been but I had other things going on and sold for scrap)

[jhatax]

FWIW, this has been my experience since 2003 when I had to get suspension work done. Doesn’t matter if it’s a BMW or Honda, dealership or indie repair shop, the story I have heard consistently is that the bushing is part of the arm for structural integrity, stability, <reason I can’t remember, truth or crock>. Bushings typically fail faster than the arm does, and this repair is expensive ($1000+ for performance cars, not that much cheaper for Civics).

The “Design for purported Safety vs. Design for Saving Dollars” principle at work.

[simplyluke]

> repair is expensive ($1000+ for performance cars, not that much cheaper for Civics)

I can almost guarantee the lion's share of this is shop labor, not parts, and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms. This is often the piece that gets missed in these discussions of "why am I replacing this huge assembly for a tiny part", if the whole assembly is coming out to deal with that tiny part anyways and shop labor is $200/hour it's cheaper to swap the assembly a lot of the time.

Try getting any repair beyond routine maintenance done on a car in the US for under $1000 these days. Car maintenance is one of the things I'm happy to DIY in most cases because the delta on costs is massive and as someone that works on computers all day it's vaguely enjoyable to get angry at a mechanical object for a change.

[brianwawok]

I’ve moved in to doing my own plumbing, electric, HVAC. Tend to keep new enough cars that they don’t need much, knock on wood. But it’s not uncommon in “making” $500 an hour or more doing electric or HVAC.

[ryandrake]

In my area, no tradesman is willing to even get out of bed for less than $1000. They have more high dollar work than they know what to do with and some of them don’t even pick up the phone anymore. You have to be made of money or learn how to DIY everything.

[userbinator]

and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms

Really? It's literally a few minutes (a few dozen $ at $200/hr, or $3.33/min) for any shop with a press. Removing the assembly from the rest of the car is going to take much longer.

[slaw]

Instead of $40 part it is $150 part. Very easy to replace. Less than 1 hour labor for both sides.

https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/jeep,2012,grand+cherokee...

[Spooky23]

That particular example is a labor arbitrage issue - it's a better value to have a $500 assembly with $250 labor than a $50 part with $600 labor. If you have the know-how, BYO labor is the magical way to save on this sort of thing.

The worst practices with cars is when they make it too tight or engineered to work on. Ford was kind of notorious for this - some dealers would do cab lifts for routine-ish work to save labor hours. I had a 90s Cadillac that required un-mounting and tipping the engine to change the rear spark plugs, unless you bought a really expensive tool.

[lelanthran]

> (I'm not sure if there was a way around this, there may well have been but I had other things going on and sold for scrap)

I've heard of people (who own a press) simply pressing out the existing bushing and pressing in a new one.

The trick is to get a new one - typically you'd have to press out the existing one, then run around town to find a match.